Pictured: Animal Crossing character currently being sold on eBay
Anyone who's played and followed virtual worlds for any moderate length of time could have predicted this would happen after Nintendo's Animal Crossing became a massive phenomenon -- but apparently, Nintendo itself didn't see it coming:
[I]f people want a certain villager, sellers offer the ability to either buy them with in-game money (either millions of bells or Nook Miles Tickets) or real-life money. The median price range is $10 (these are sold listings by the way), but popular villages like Raymond can go for as much as $25 or more in package deals. It's a practice that's been going on since launch, but only just now is Nintendo going to actually start looking into it. Speaking to J-Cast, Nintendo explains that selling content for real life monetary gain is a violation of their terms of service, and they will take action accordingly if they see it happening.
Notwithstanding that threat, there's a pretty huge marketplace for Animal Crossing content on eBay (with 15,000+ "animal crossing villager" items currently for sale), and Asian players started selling items for Animal Crossing goods via WeChat Pay and AliPay QR back in April. None of that's surprising. The real mystery is why Nintendo didn't anticipate any of that, and create some kind of Animal Crossing marketplace of its own -- or capture it via an auction system similar to what Blizzard did with Diablo III content back in 2012.
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